


Corrupted

by DarthFucamus



Category: Tron (1982), Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clu2 is an asshole, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Sex, F/M, Fighting turns to sex, Love, tron lives, yori lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 18:29:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12776850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthFucamus/pseuds/DarthFucamus
Summary: Rinzler tracks down a Resistance smuggler, only to find himself face to face with someone from a past life.





	Corrupted

 

Rinzler leaps from his Light Jet, deactivating it back into the baton from whence it spawned, and lands on the rooftop. He clips the deactivated baton to his thigh. The female program he’d spotted from above is standing there, brazen as can be with her blue circuits blazing in the endless night. Lightning crackles overhead in the dark skies as he removes the dual Light Disc from his back.

He stalks toward her, separating the discs into their identical halves, armed in both hands. He knows she has the hex drive with the critical data on it, but she is making no move to defend herself.

Rinzler doesn’t understand. But it is irrelevant. Clu2 wants the data on that drive and Rinzler will retrieve it for him.

She backs away and speaks in a voice as clear as it is soft.

“I have what you want.” 

There is an echo of recognition inside of him, deep beneath the clotted, twisted layers choking his core programming. 

It’s irrelevant, all that matters is the hex drive.

He can’t see her face through her helmet, so he comes nearer. She’s no threat to him, just a basic function. A smuggler, a criminal, an enemy to his SysAdmin.

“I have what you want, Rinzler,” she repeats in the modulator-distorted voice, standing tall despite her short height, even as he comes within arm’s reach. He can see her fear, smell it almost. In his mind, he sees the way her luminous blue voxels and conductive fluid will scatter to the rooftop when he strikes her in the right place… but first he needs the data. Strike too soon and he might risk losing it to cascade deresolution when he terminates her.

The staccato rattle in his throat rises in anticipation of her imminent compliance or derezzing. Either way, his order will be satisfied.

She moves slowly back, watching him, and pulls something from the inside of her coat. He anticipates a weapon, but her hand emerges with the glowing white hex drive.

She tosses it to the ground between them. Rinzler recombines his weapons into a single Light Disc and lowers into a smooth crouch to pick it up. He is surprised by her willingness to give it up, but only a little. He knows that he is feared by many.

The moment he holds it, he can tell that it’s empty, or nearly so. Either way, it’s far lighter than it should be. It’s a trick, he realizes. He looks up, wrath rising inside of him, to see the program collapsing her helmet into the collar of her circuit suit.

He freezes.

Old, damaged code wars with layers of patchwork reprogramming until there’s a tempest beneath the surface. His circuits flicker, but remain burning red.

“Do you remember me?” she asks as her round, dark eyes fix on him. Her voice, unmodulated, is a soft music that cuts through the forceful, commanding voices that are always present, always keeping Clu2’s directives close to the surface. Guileless, but weary, her eyes sparkle in the dim light. Even serious as she is, Rinzler can see that her face is given easily to smiles. 

The knowledge of that smile comes from a memory fragment, soft and blue, surfacing in his thoughts; a cool, dreamy island in a sea of sharp, burning crimson.

She steps closer, showing a deadly lack of self-preservation, but Rinzler can’t bring his Light Disc up to strike.

“It’s been so many cycles,” she says, peering up into his face with bright, weary eyes. “But I knew I’d find you again...”

His circuits flicker again. This time there is a microsecond where it almost feels as though… No. Newer directives regain control and anger flashes hot.

He intends to kill her for wasting his time, his Master’s time, but she faces him with an incisive gaze, unwavering. She looks… disappointed.

“I have information Clu2 wants.”

His hand wielding the discs pauses, falters, lowers. If what she says is true, Clu2 may want to speak with her first. What was she going to do? Attack him? The thought is absurd, and highly improbable.

She doesn’t resist as Rinzler turns her around and fixes her hands behind her back in rezzed manacles. His face is hidden anyway, but he feels better knowing that those eyes aren’t looking at him in disappointment anymore, nor can she see him taking the sight of her in with longing he doesn’t understand, and doesn’t want to examine.

He snaps the Hex drive onto his back holster with the disc for transport. A strange shiver passes through him when the two items connect. The disorientation lasts for only a microcycle before he continues on his mission to bring her to the Central Tower.

\--------------

Yori faces Clu2 with the same level of understated defiance as he examines the hex drive from his golden-glowing throne. Its secret function fulfilled, it is now completely empty. Tron City is far below, visible through the large transparent wall behind him. The perfect vantage for a megalomaniacal dictator aboard his command ship.

“What is this?” His cold eyes look at her, penetrating and intelligent, from his elevated throne.

Yori shrugs.

“A decoy. The data you want is in me, and you won’t be able to remove it by force. Flynn saw to it to apply safeguards to my core long ago.”

Clu2 regards her with dangerous focus at the mention of the name Flynn.

“Is that so?” 

The program is curious to him. And though he doesn’t know her himself, there is a familiarity imparted by the knowledge Flynn passed to him when Clu2 was created.

“If you derezz me, the data containing his location goes with me. If you try to extract it against my will, it will erase itself.”

Clu2 meets her defiance with nonchalance.

“I know who you are,” he says with detached interest. He leans forward, arms rested on splayed knees, the Hex drive loosely held in his gloved hand. A cold smirk hitches the corner of his mouth projecting false amiability. “You were someone to the Maker, once. And to… his Champion.”

His eyes flicker to Rinzler, who stands beside her. It’s almost imperceptible, but she catches it. As if there’s any secret as to the former identity of the elite enforcer in the dark suit. Clu2 is truly brazen to allow the symbol to remain on Rinzler’s chest, four squares that form the letter ‘T’. It’s a plain mockery of what that symbol once stood for, and it disgusts her, and twists at her chest.

“You wear the face of a friend while spreading a message of evil,” she says, lifting her chin, trying to remember that this program is  _ not _ the original CLU, the one she fought alongside when they faced the Master Control program. That was so very many cycles ago, when she was young and naive enough to think they were unbeatable.

Clu2 accepts her accusation without losing his smile of cool disdain.

“And what do you want for this information?” he asks with the tone of someone who has no intention of fulfilling any of her demands.

She looks to Rinzler beside her, searching for some recognition and seeing only an impassive black helmet. He’s not even looking at her.

“I want Tron back.”

Jarvis, standing beside Clu2’s throne with a datapad in hand, laughs once in shock. The intelligence officer has been reading data through his transparent visor this entire time, but now the visor is blank, and he is just staring at her in bare disbelief. Clu2 doesn’t react visibly, and it is unsettling.

“And you’re willing to give up Flynn to have him?”

“Yes,” she answers without hesitation.

Clu2 chuckles. Soft, at first, eerie in the otherwise silent space, then louder. Jarvis begins to laugh nervously with him, and Yori’s face burns and colors in humiliation, but she doesn’t back down.

“Rinzler, take her to the Rectifier.”

Yori can’t hide her dismay, her fear, her horror, as the black-suited program beside her seizes one arm. Clu2 stands up, sweeping his long, gold-circuit-edged cloak behind him in a grand gesture of imperiousness.

“You will become one of mine, and then you will willingly give me the data I want.”

“It won’t work!” she shouts, struggling against the iron grip as she is tugged backwards. “I’ll never reveal anything to you, no matter how many times you try to rewrite my programming. Not until you give in to my demands. You can reprogram me a thousand times and you’ll never get it.”

“You may not give in after a thousand times, but after that…? I am patient enough to find out. You, however, may find yourself a little… scrambled after the first 500 or so. Just ask our mutual friend there. His base code may be a little corrupted after all the rewrites I’ve put him through, but never have I had such a loyal servant.”

Yori feels the wet welling in her eyes as she looks to the black helmet face of Rinzler.

“Please, Tron, don’t do this,” she whispers. There is no response but that low, staccato growl, and she feels utterly alone at that moment.

“So sad,” Jarvis says without any sincerity behind it as she is dragged out of the audience chamber. “Former lovers, reunited, only to be torn apart again.”

“Perhaps it’s too cruel,” Clu2 muses with an ironic show of contemplation. “Make her a Black Guard… that way they need never part.”

“You are most merciful, Sire,” Jarvis says with a smirk.

“It’s unfortunate they won’t be able to appreciate it.”

\--------------

Rinzler is impervious to her pleading, and before long, she gives up trying. The massive airborne ship containing the Rectifier machine confirms what she’s feared; Clu2 is indeed building an army. Circuit suits in an array of blue, white, green, and purple are herded into the mouth of the machine that would rewrite them while numerous Red Circuits stand guard. Yori witnesses a green military program try to break away from the herd and escape, but she is derezzed without hesitation by one of Clu2’s soldiers.

The rainbow array of hues enter the glowing mouth of the machine in fear and grief, but the only circuit color that leaves is corrupted crimson, faces blank.

Rinzler escorts her himself. She doesn’t know why he doesn’t just hand her over.

She thinks of the Hex drive and the single string of code on it… the subtle virus it contained is working deep within him even now, though its efforts may not come to fruition for a long time yet. It is simple enough to escape notice, smart enough to protect itself no matter how many times Rinzler is Rectified and reprogrammed. It works slowly, but it is nearly indestructible.

She never even knew where Flynn is, but her purpose is fulfilled all the same. Some day, what was once lost will be restored, she has to hope. Because of her actions, the champion will return to his city, and he will bring an era of peace with him. It is fulfilling, even if she isn’t there to see it.

She takes advantage of the seconds she has left before joining the queue, and twists her body, standing on tip-toes, to press her mouth against Rinzler’s helmet. His vibratory vocalizations hitch, and he freezes as Red-Circuit guards take over her custody.

He watches her join the rest of the programs slated for Rectification until he can no longer see her in the press of bodies. He lingers a moment more, unsure as to why her absence makes him feel so hollow.

\--------------

_ Many cycles later... _

Luxus’s grimace is visible beneath her helmet. Her Light Staff hums through the air in a blazing arc, more to ward off her opponent than in an earnest attack.

He puts some distance between them and circles like a predator. Through the opening in the Arena’s roof above them, the lightning crackles. It is a dramatic backdrop to a routine sparring match, meant to hone the Champion’s skills, and to test the extent of hers. She is getting slower, though, which means she’s about do for another patch.

“C’mon, Champion, show me what you’re made of,” she taunts.

There is no effort to parlais, Rinzler just attacks.

He is the silent, shadowy center in a sizzling vortex, and she moves in slow-motion. She can’t track him; his suit masks his shape so well he is nearly invisible. 

Lux evades his blows, connects with his discs once with a metallic clash, and dodges away before he can strike her body. The resounding clank when their weapons strike one another, or the floor of the Disc War combat bay, echoes around them into the empty Arena.

She suspects he is going easy on her, though why that could be, she cannot fathom. Perhaps he senses the weakness growing in her, the shakiness around her core that has been spreading, seeding disconnected fragments of thought in her waking moments, but mercy is not within his parameters.

“Stop fucking around,” she snarls, lunging staff first, missing, then dancing back. “Our Master may be watching.”

Clu2 most certainly has better things to do, but apparently that’s what Rinzler needs to hear, because he comes at her. She’s barely able to ward off his blows, and he slowly drives her back. He’s trying to pin her against the wall. Her pulse is throbbing in her neck, and her red circuits are bright with the exertion. She actually thinks he’s going to derezz her this time.

There is a dense ache in her chest at the thought of Rinzler being the one to terminate her, but she isn’t sure why. It happens occasionally to the other Black Guards, but never to her.

_ Tron must survive, that is all that matters, _ an alien voice says in her head.

The thought is intrusive and confusing, and makes little sense. It trips her up. 

Above, the dark skies flash with static lightning discharge, threatening rain. She stumbles and falls, gritting her teeth for a killing blow that doesn’t come. He executes a tight forward flip and lands atop her, sending her Light Staff skidding away before it retracts into the baton. 

Lux pants, looking into the reflective helmet face of the program hovering over her. Rinzler’s dual Light Discs hum in her ears, singeing the voxels on the sides of her cheeks, and illuminating a distorted reflection in his smooth, faceted visage.

“Do it,” she hisses through her teeth, pulse pounding. 

_ Tron must survive... _

She shakes the confusion out of her mind. In an instant, the heat and light of his discs lessens as he backs off.

The why of his mercy is lost to relief, a traitorous sense of self-preservation. It means her programming is starting to decay, as it always does.

Some memory of the past ripples to the surface of her mind, making her suddenly aware of the fact that Clu2’s reprogramming is starting to wear off. It is almost time for another. She both dreads this eventuality, and anticipates it with a longing hardcoded into her to compel her to comply.

The low staccato sound of his damaged modulator as he waits for her to make the next move is the only noise apart from her own breathing. Distant thunder rumbles and Lux twists to her feet.

Now that she is up, Rinzler begins to circle again.

She picks up her baton from where it lies, and reactivates the staff setting. She wipes at the sweat gathering on her exposed chin and upper lip, and they stare at one another. 

She sprints forward.

She and Rinzler converge in the center of the rooftop as the skies break open. Their weapons blaze red trails into the air, spots of luminescence in a dark, vast space. The sizzling edges of his Light Discs clash against the glowing ends of her Light Staff, echoing in electric snaps and flying sparks. The power-draining water doesn’t make it past the polarized field above the sky-roof, but it adds an instinctive sense of danger all the same.

He kicks, she dodges. He goes low, she goes high. He strikes and she blocks. They operate on a symmetry that none of the other Black Guards seem to share with him. Beneath layers of programming and Clu2’s directives, Luxus knows the reason for it, but she is frightened to dredge it up. She knows the pain of awareness will be worse than derezzing.

“Quit toying with me,” she growls when he strikes her with an elbow instead of the killing edge of one of his discs.

He is as graceful as he is arrogant, but his arrogance is well earned. She avoids a thrown disc, but barely misses the rebound off the back wall. At that moment, Rinzler sweeps a leg, and she goes down a second time, the wind knocked out of her.

He returns the discs to their back holster and climbs over her, pinning her forearms on the flat surface. She is flush-faced and breathless. Rinzler shifts his position and wedges a hard knee in her crotch, lowering his face in what is unmistakably satisfaction. Yes, he’s won, and adds to the humiliation by letting her live.

That show of mercy is more telling than he might realize. It means that whatever is beneath the surface is beginning to break through for him as well. More fragments come to the fore, fueled by the close contact.

He pants, and in an act of baffling intimacy, deactivates her helmet. It retracts into the collar of her circuit suit. She looks on his helmet face with naked eyes, but they immediately drop down to the ‘T’ emblem glowing crimson on his chest.

A spark of consciousness in her mind catches alight, begins to burn bright and clear. Suddenly, painfully, she remembers who she is.

The weight of hundreds of Rectifications and a half millennia of cycles crashes down on her chest. She isn’t free, though. It’s the worst agony of all, to be aware of the prison that holds her. Clu2’s command code still cages her will. She can only look at the figure of her former lover, the corrupted Champion, helpless to free him or herself from this neverending torment.

So many times she’d come close, only to lose him in the end. 

A burning need, and a thin hope, replaces despair. She is sure, if she could only get him to touch her again, to remember what they shared… she can undo what’s been done. Maybe not immediately. Her returning memory taunts her with the fact that this has happened before, to no avail.

She’ll do it as often as she needs to. She’ll chip away at the scar tissue until nothing of his re-programming is left, and the glowing blue center in his tempestuous existence shines with his pure light once more.

She hooks an arm around his neck, forcing his masked forehead against hers. Clu2’s deadliest soldier lets her, and he is trembling.

“You know me,” she whispers, gasping for breath. Her other arm slides around his firm waist, holds him. “It’s Yori. Tron, it’s me.”

His low, menacing rattle is the only answer she gets, but she can hear echoes of the voice he used to have, and she knows he’s in there yet. It’s as dangerous a thought to entertain as it is tempting. She is in the midst of Clu2’s territory. Over the cycles, his power has only grown stronger, and the presence of those who seek to oppose him wanes with every advance of his influence. But she can’t let go yet.

He lets go of her arm so he can grab her neck. Yori waits for him to squeeze hard enough to terminate her, but he doesn’t. His other hand drags over to her breast and her pulse leaps ahead as she realizes what is happening.

“Yes,” she whispers, pressing soft lips to his helmet face despite the hand around her neck. “Remember this? You knew me, once…”

He squeezes her breast, jolting her, and her legs fall open with a sharp gasp, an involuntary reaction. It isn’t sweet, but she doesn’t want sweet.

The hand on her breast starts separating the seam on the front of her grid suit. Knowing full well they would be clearly visible to any observers in the transparent Disc Wars bay, she grinds herself on his knee. It won’t last, and she is desperate to feel something besides the pain and anger whirling inside of her, a chaos that might eventually free her from Clu2’s control… if only she had more time.

They’ve found one another, like they always do. A stolen moment in an endless cycle of chasing and being chased that ends with one of them leaving or… or this. Clu2 always keeps them near. It is a cruelty disguised as a kindness, and she’s now present enough to hate him for it.

Yori’s hands travel up his thick thighs and converge in the center where they knead the growing sign of his need. The firmness of it, and the urgency causes a delicious spasm inside of her.

“Do you remember?” she pants, licking her lips as his hand tightens around her throat, but not to kill. His other hand slides through the open front of her Grid Suit and pulls it back, baring her breasts. His gloved hand pinches her nipple, as if in answer, and she gasps and utters a strained laugh. 

Her fingers hurry to unfasten the fly of his suit as he peels one side of the suit down her shoulder. He grabs her soft bosom and squeezes it hard enough to bruise. His cock is straining against the seam and as soon as his fly is open partly, his erection forces it open the rest of the way and bounces free.

She grips its girth tight and he pushes it forward into her fist, uttering a rhythmic, clicking growl. Rinzler is animalistic and frightening in a way that her sweet Tron never was. She feels guilty that she likes this new quality about him.

She fights the soft memories, blue circuits flickering together a lifetime ago... covert meetings full of giggles and sighs, intoxicated and drunk on infatuation and… love. Innocent, careful, curious.

It’ll never be like that again, but as she grips his cock and feels the raw, unrefined power beneath it, she’s not sure she wants that anymore. They’ve both been through too much, and the concept of innocence is a distant dream.

He releases her breast and opens the front of her suit the rest of the way. Her pale skin appears matte and desaturated in color next to the luminous red circuits of her Black Guard grid suit. She’s seen him once with his suit partially removed, enough to know that the body beneath is riddled with glowing red grid lines and exposed voxels that look like open wounds. The scars are the product of Clu2’s flawed attempts to break him and reform him. As long as Tron is under Clu2’s sway, he can never remove the suit, as it is possible that it holds him together, as horrifying as that thought is.

She has a vague memory of Tron’s handsome face, but she hasn’t seen it since he became Rinzler. She doesn’t want to know if the disfigurement reaches his face, and would rather hold onto the memory.

As soon as the front is open down to her groin, he slips his hand between her thighs. Two gloved fingers slide between her wet lips and he hooks them inside of her. He jerks them upward, shooting her through with a spike of sharp warmth and she moans.

He is impatient to disrobe her. She hears the material of her suit rip in his haste, and he is visibly breathing harder. Portions of it derezz, a casualty of their urgency. She can only help him get it off her before he shreds it entirely or makes it derezz, and then she’ll have to make her way back to the armory naked.

She knows this has happened at least once before.

Rinzler kneels, watching her as he tugs her ass against his lower belly, her legs thrown over one shoulder. The length of his bare cock is pressed hard between her slick folds, and she is held tight to it. She feels herself clench as the need to fuck him aches in her core, but he waits with his steady, ceaseless rattle. He seems to want to savor it, but she is painfully aware of the temporary state of her clarity.

The directive that compels the two of them to seek out Rectification before their reprogramming decays completely is inescapable. The transience of this moment in time bears down on them both.

Yori strains, braces the floor with her hands, grinds herself against him, but he doesn’t move. She bites her lip and whimpers. He strokes her hips and squeezes the soft flesh, growling softly.

When her legs start to shake and the need starts to become overwhelming, he relents.

He tilts his hips back, grabs his cock by the base, and pushes it into her slickness in one movement. It hits her deep, and her eyes close in a moment of perfect bliss. It feels like she is safe, and he is taking refuge in her as he holds her against him.

He fucks slow, steady, relentless. Yori throws her arms back and arches her spine, a willing captive to the way he has her legs tight to his chest. He plunges deep to the point of discomfort before withdrawing, only to sink into her again, filling her with his shuddering heat. The contours of his suit bite into the back of her thighs and bent knees, and his vocalizations grow increasingly coarse and strained.

She is aware of the arena floor a great distance beneath them through the transparent floor, and it makes her feel weightless. She is anchored, as though the only thing that is keeping her from falling is Rinzler, filling her with himself, making them both complete again, for just a little while. He leans forward, compressing her knees to one side of her chest. Somewhere on the other side of that opaque, shining surface, he watches her as his hipbones smack her inner thighs. He pounds tightness into her lower back, holding her legs with one arm while the other braces the floor. Fragile heat gathers strength.

They develop a rhythm as easy as muscle memory, an extension of the symmetry they always seem to find together, honed over many cycles of combat sparring and executing very real missions.

“Try to remember this,” she whispers and stutters with the impacts of their bodies joining harshly. “Remember this.”

She is throbbing, tight, shaking. Her hand slides between the soft, sweat-dampened seam of her upper thighs and groin and she kneads the sensitive center to alleviate it. There is no relief from the pang of bittersweet longing in her chest.

He holds her closer, pressing the smooth front of his helmet against her forehead. Pinning her thighs with the weight of his body, his hands are free to hold her face. It’s hard to breathe, but she likes to feel breathless with him. He hems her in, traps her vocalizations and gasps in the heated air between them.

Her chest swells but she can’t catch her breath as the pressure builds. Her internal current spikes until she is a filament glowing with too much power. The misery-tinted pleasure swells in her belly, writhing like a ball of Grid Worms. There’s no air, but it doesn’t matter as her fingers swirl against her tender nerve cluster.

She pleads a wordless moan, beyond the ability to verbally express what she is feeling, that she never wants it to end, though it must...

Her climax is like being hit by a small EMP bomb. It triggers her to grip him as she’s overcome by pleasure in waves. Rinzler growls, fingers digging into her bare breast and the side of her face with bruising strength.

With a bestial, rattling groan, he empties inside of her in a hot flood, spurred by her contractions. His cock pulses, and his chest rises and falls as he pants through his waning release, his hips moving weakly to completion.

Yori falls limp, panting. 

It is many minutes before Rinzler pulls himself out of her, but there is no use in lingering; the beautiful moment is gone. Luminous red fluid leaks from the head of his cock and trickles down her crack onto the bay floor between them.

Rinzler bows his head, shoulders hunched, as he closes himself back into his suit.

“Yori,” he croaks, red circuits flickering blue, for the briefest of moments. She isn’t sure if she’d actually seen it, or if her hope overrode her perception… because it would mean that his base code is breaking through. That the virus she’d implanted all those cycles ago had indeed been making steady progress all this time. That maybe they wouldn’t be doomed forever to repeat the cycle of parting and meeting again with memory caches reset.

It’s the first time he’s spoken a word to her in this runcycle, and the sound of it clenches in her chest like a cold fist. It is as tragic as it is encouraging.

She crawls toward him on hands and knees and presses her lips to the side of his helmet.

She can’t escape Clu2’s control, hardcoded deep in her core. The pattern is inescapable but… there is hope.

They will find each other again. They always do, even if they have to start over each time. He spoke her name, and it’s the first time she has allowed herself to feel hope in such a long time.

\--------------

Epilogue

The surge of power from Kevin Flynn and Clu2’s convergence cast the Grid into a darkness so complete it felt like the beginning of time. Once the portal closed finally, there was only the quiet lapping of the dark sea. Every corrupted program within the range of the shockwave derezzed instantly. All but one.

A single program lingers in the depths beneath the surface. A silence so profound accompanies the heaviness pressing on him from all sides until he can’t be sure that the rest of the Grid exists at all.

His circuits, once red, flicker a feeble white in the inky blackness. He is aware enough to know that he will never be found. The Sea will eventually break down his coding, and he will rejoin the unknowable matter of the digital universe.

It is fitting, in a way. After all horror he was forced to commit under the designation of Rinzler, he is finally able to fulfill his base function and fight for the Users.

He is free from Clu2’s influence, after many lifetimes of slavery. Now, he remembers all that he’s lost with stark clarity. It should be agony to think of the past, yet he finds comfort in knowing that the Son of Flynn yet lives, and that the ISO Qorra is with him in a place that he will never be able to fathom.

As his sluggish body begins to give in to the unrelenting weight of exhaustion, a sense of peace fills him with its warmth, and Tron smiles inside of his helmet.

He doesn’t know how long he drifts, weightless in the heavy void.

He only knows that the darkness is giving way to a soft, dim glow that doesn’t come from himself. He wonders if this is what it feels like to derezz by drowning. Maybe it’s different from the other ways, less painful. A mercy he doesn’t deserve.

He realizes that it’s not only in his mind. There is an actual source of light coming from above, and it is only growing brighter.

He watches the illumination with confusion and wonder. It’s beautiful, whatever it is. Its presence rejuvenates him, and he realizes how long it’s been since he’s drawn breath. He kicks, an involuntary spasm that nonetheless causes his grid suit to flare bright.

The vision doesn’t fade, it only grows clearer, parting shreds of disconnected code and fragments of unformed command strings that form the Sea of Simulation. It’s a one-man Light Glider. The vehicle is not made the function here, but it persists, and it is coming right for him.

The circuits of the glider begin to flutter, warning of imminent deactivation in the harsh environment. The rider, in a fully enclosed grid suit, simply pushes off from the seat, a blazing blue vision burning the darkness away.

When they are close enough that he can see through the transparent front of the helmet, he thinks he is seeing ghosts.

Yori.

It cannot be, but there she is, closing the distance between them as the deactivated Light Glider sinks and surrenders its light to the endless depths.

The sight, whether real or dreamed, is too compelling to ignore. He reaches for her, and she for him, until they meet in the middle. Her body is solid and so very  _ real. _

They embrace, bundled together at the bottom of the shadowy sea. She smiles, and the chill of the sea retreats from his skin like a charge of pure power to his core. She is not afraid, so neither is he. They are together again, and that is all that matters.

She detaches the spare baton at her hip. Holding tight to him, she activates the single Glider function. It is not made for this environment either. Nonetheless, they begin to rise through the layers of black as though tethered by a buoy.

They breach the surface of the heavy waters where another vehicle waits, this one an enclosed two-man Light Jet, hovering on autopilot just above the gentle waves. As welcome as the sight is, Tron can’t stop staring at her. Her steadfast determination as she grabs onto the extended ladder with glowing blue rungs, the way she purses her soft lips and squares her jaw with the effort of helping him climb, makes his heart surge.

Once inside, the reality of the situation sets in and they sit in silence, holding each other beneath a blanket for warmth as the water dries.

Tron can’t speak without pain, but nothing needs to be said. The cycles that separated them dissolve away until there’s only this moment. Without words, they promise to never part again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't meant to be so angsty, but once I thought of the question, what if Rinzler encountered Yori? Well, it nagged at me until I made myself write it.
> 
> Thanks to FancyLadySnackCakes for going over this for me! She's the best!
> 
> If you liked this, please let me know! I need the encouragement! <3


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